Chivalry 2 launch trailer is full of blood, guts, and a projectile severed head

Ahead of its launch on June 8, Chivalry 2 has debuted a new trailer packed full of large-scale battles, carnage, and projectile severed heads.

If you're new to the series, and maybe even if you've played the first game, the level of gore showcased in Chivalry 2's launch trailer is probably pretty shocking. Arrows burst through people's faces, blood fountains from a shoulder freshly separated from its arm, and at one point, someone cuts their enemy's head off and hurls it at someone else. I guess developer Tripwire wasn't kidding when it said it hopes to mimic the scale and intensity of the 'Battle of the Bastards' episode from Game of Thrones.

For the uninitiated, Chivalry 2 is the long-awaited sequel to 2012's Chivalry: Medieval Warfare, itself a multiplayer hack-and-slash game based on the Half-Life 2 mod, Age of Chivalry. Large-scale, medieval, and yes, extremely bloody battles are the name of the game, with the main mode being a 64-player free-for-all. The original game also had duels, team deathmatch, king of the hill, and other multiplayer modes. It's unclear which of those game modes will be available in Chivalry 2 at launch, but Tripwire recently published a roadmap vaguely outlining its future plans.

The sequel adds a revamped gameplay system with weighty animations and faster combat, a bigger, more interactive sandbox, more detailed player expressions, a new 40-player strategic game mode, and loads more. The new-gen versions have been enhanced for Xbox Series X and PS5 with 4K, 60FPS, ray-tracing, and support for things like haptic feedback in the DualSense.

You can pre-load Chivalry 2 on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S starting Sunday, June 6 at approximately 8am PDT / 11am EDT / 4pm BST. PC players can start their pre-loads on Tuesday, June 8 at about 7:30 PDT / 10:30am EDT / 3:30pm BST.

For more games to play with a few friends, check out our comprehensive guide to the best online games available in 2021. Or if you'd prefer to play alongside your comrades and unite against a common enemy, these are the best co-op games to play right now.